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Thursday, January 09, 2014

After a summer spent chronicling all of the goings on, I appear to have taken my good ol' time putting a new blog post out there! September 9th? Wow! Has it really been that long?!

So what has been going on since then. Hmmm...

Well, in September, Kaitlyn turned 1 month old. The end of September approached, and it was almost time for my 6-week maternity leave to come to an end. I went "back" to work to finish out the days that I had coming to me before I went into labor. Essentially, I had 7 days to work before my departure. So those 7 days were Friday the 20th of September, the following week, and the Monday after. My last day at TGen was the 30th of September.

As I left, I had arrangements made to go to the hiring company that I would be getting paid through for my contract work. I went to the office and was there for a good 2 hours or so, filling out forms, taking tests and talking to people. I got the impression that they didn't realize that I was going for a particular job, I didn't need them to FIND me one. One of the ladies that I talked to was telling me about all of these random job opportunities.

Moving on, I had the rest of the week of to let everything get processed. Due to the government shut down (ha!), they mentioned that they couldn't verify work eligibility. But that was OK, since I wasn't in a rush to start right that moment...especially with a trip to Montana coming up.

Daniel was on fall break the first week in October. Kaitlyn wasn't yet in daycare, and so we figured it was prime time to take a trip to Montana. It also happened that Mike's father was very sick, and we got there with a few days to say our goodbyes and let him meet his newest granddaughter. He passed away right before midnight on the Wednesday of our trip, and the memorial was on Saturday. We headed back to Phoenix the following day.

Monday came, and Kaitlyn started daycare (having the record of being able to keep her out of daycare the longest out of all of our kids...Daniel and Jared both started at just over 6 weeks of age, and she made it to about 10 weeks!). Daniel also started his after school program as well.

After a few more weeks of waiting for the staffing company to get back to me, I finally started my new contract job at Paradigm! It has taken a while to get into, but I really enjoy it and I find that I really get engrossed in the work. Another surprise came right before Christmas, with an offer of a more permanent position and working in-house!

For Christmas, we made the somewhat last-minute decision to drive to Reno. That way, we could bring Mike's mom back with us and spend some time in Reno as well. We stayed in Yerington for a few days, spending time with Mike's brother and mom, and his brother's girlfriend's family. After Christmas, we went to Reno and stayed at the Peppermill for a few nights in the most awesome room ever (or most awesome BATHROOM ever!). We met up with a few of Mike's former co-workers, including Maurice and his family.

One of the days in Reno we took a trip to Tahoe, where the kids got to sled a little bit and play around in the snow.

As we departed Reno, we made our way to Vegas, deciding to split the return trip into two parts. We got to Las Vegas a little after dark and crashed out in our room at the Excalibur. The trip from Reno to Vegas is LONG! The next day we got up and went to the Venetian to visit the wax museum. We hadn't been there since Daniel was a baby, and it was fun to have the kids pose and see all of the new things that they have.

Back to Phoenix we came, with Mike's mom in tow. After that, who knows what direction she will go!

I say back to reality now, as just this week I started going into the office. I now have my very official badge (which, comically, has my TGen picture on it, since it's in the same building).

The kids are definitely growing like weeds! Kaitlyn turned 5 months yesterday, and I'm still keeping up with the picture a day thing with her. For the boys, I started doing the daily picture for them on New Years. Kaitlyn is good at rolling over, holding her head up, and tries to wiggle and crawl. She is getting the hang of the exersaucer too! Jared is picking up so many things, and he loves to point out his letters and numbers, and he's trying his hand at some words. Daniel is picking up a lot of words too, and is really good at doing detailed work. He likes to tinker, and can put together things (like a vacuum cleaner!) and likes "machines".

Well, that's about all for now. The dust is settling from all of the drama of 2013, and we are now all enjoying the ride!

About Me

My name is Amy Stone (formerly Coon), married to Mike for the past 7 1/2 years and mother to Daniel (5), Jared (2 1/2) and Kaitlyn (2 months). I do cancer research for a living, with the majority of my research being with finding new ways to treat breast cancer and dissecting the molecular pathways of breast cancer progression. I also teach introductory biology at the university level online.

My blogging interests are many (my kids, my life, my hobbies and so on) and I enjoy so many things that it's hard to list all of them!